25 July 2017

I want to say I heard the author or something about the book on a podcast a while back and sought this out. The book brings us deep into the lives and societies of various animals, giving us an idea as to how they operate, their heirarchical structure, and so on. One section is dedicated to elephants, another wolves, and so on.

For someone who has limited science knowledge, this was a really great book where I learned a lot. Elephant societies are fascinating! Wolves are weird! It's all super interesting and complicated, and this book strikes the near-perfect balance of not dumbing the information down while also not playing a pandering game with the audience. An underrated nonfiction read for me - I don't know why I'm not constantly hearing about this book.

If you like science, animals, biology, sociology, learning... check this one out.

21 July 2017

My favorite thing about this book is the concept - any time a story wants to subvert the coming-of-age traveling novel, I'm on board, and when it's because an overbearing mother trying to relive her own teen years vicariously through her daughter? I'm totally in.

It's sort of like a Gilmore Girls episode with a lot more conflict, and there's a lot to love about it on a whole as our mother-daughter team bumble through Europe and ruin each other's experiences.

The downside to this book is that the conceit does get a little stale in the middle part until things move to their conclusion. Getting to the end can be a bit of a rough patch if you're used to a more typically-paced narrative from the YA genre, but that shouldn't keep you away from the book on a whole.

It's funny and it's got a lot of heart, and it's definitely a fun read in the genre.

20 July 2017

While I'm pretty much into a lot of Lovecraftian stuff these days, The Night Ocean takes a slightly different exploratory track with it to mixed results. Ostensibly about a woman trying to find answers after her husband goes missing and how it lines up with her husband's obsession with a specific facet of Lovecraft's life, this book gets bogged down VERY quickly with a lot of fictional-and-not-so-fictional research and history, and the narrative completely loses the plot very quickly. As someone who enjoys books about research and such, yeah, sure - you do you, Paul LaFarge. But losing the narrative in service to theories regarding the Barlow/Lovecraft relationship simply didn't do the trick here.

This was a very frustrating read without the payoff I was hoping for, and I thought this book had some amazing potential. Unless your consumption is almost exclusively Lovecraftian in nature, consider skipping this one.

I've noted before that I'm relatively new to horror at this point, and I've been delving into a lot of short stories as of late. While I didn't love Experimental Film, I was interested in the short stories of Gemma Files anyway, and this collection came highly regarded.

Like any collection, there are hits and misses, but there are a lot of solid, creepy stories here. The highlights of the title story, of the story with literal meat puppets, they don't take away from anything else, and even the stories that don't quite work still succeed in the efforts. My big complaint is less structural and more personal - one thing I have not been able to really do well with on the horror side of things is body horror, and Files deals heavily in this area. If that squicks you out a lot, this might not be the collection for you.

For everyone else, though? Check it out. The stories are quick and well-crafted, and there are some real gems here. Worth a read.

Jennifer E. Smith has hit her stride as of late with some great young adult romances. Windfall, from the cover alone, is very clearly a change of pace for her, and while it mostly works, what it gains in story development it loses in charm.

What is the windfall in Windfall? It's a birthday lottery ticket that ends up winning millions for a girl's best friend. The story quickly rolls into a cautionary tale about the pains and pleasures of a massive financial gain before hitting the inevitable redemption arc.

I'm not saying Smith had to go the route of truly negative results on this, especially for YA. But what was truly disappointing here was the paint-by-numbers approach throughout the tale that may not be immediately obvious to the target audience but was amazingly predictable to this adult reader. While I don't need surprises in YA, it doesn't mean they can't at least be tried. Still, it's a fine read and hits more than it misses - it's just not what I feel like it could have been.

Tomorrow's Kin is a solid, interesting first contact novel. As someone who generally really responds well to any first contact novel, to enjoy one a little more than the rest is not a bad thing in the least, and I would say that's where I place Tomorrow's Kin.

The premise is pretty straightforward, where some aliens land on Earth and, once communication is established, we learn about where they are from and why they are here. The results of all this information inform a story that becomes less about "what is it like knowing there's other life" and more about coping with the aftermath, both of meeting an alien race (and all that implies in this book's conceit) and of what the aliens came to accomplish. It's a unique and different take on the genre, and one I appreciated greatly.

The big downfall of this book? Approximately the first third is basically (if not entirely) a reprint of the novella that preceded it, Yesterday's Kin. I somewhat wish someone had warned me of this ahead of time, as I worked to complete the novella before diving into this only to find that I was basically rereading the novella immediately afterwards. If there were additions, they did not make a measurable impact on the overall story for me, so use this as a takeaway if you're already familiar with the novella. For new readers, though, you can dive right in without issue. Absolutely a great read and solid take on the subgenre.

So I admit that I really only knew George Noory from when I had late nights out and listened to Coast to Coast with him as a guest host. But still, this is marketed as a political book by a well-known conspiracy monger (at least the fun ones), so why not take a flier on it?

The elephant in the room is that the politics really take a back seat here. There are a few mentions here and there, but they're mostly in the context of well-known alien abduction and government conspiracy tales. So instead of getting some hot takes on the current climate from the context of someone who may or may not believe in lizard people, it ends up being an introductory primer on a bunch of conspiracies I was already aware of. Great for people new to the area of interest, pretty useless for the rest of us.

The best part of the book for me, though, was the mini-memoir Noory includes in the end, telling his story and how he got to the point he's at in his career. This was perhaps the most interesting part of the read for me and might have been more valuable as the framework for whatever the intention was here than anything else.

Overall? I can't recommend it unless you're REALLY into what Noory's into and his mere existence is enough to get you excited. It offers nothing new to anyone already familiar with the topics Noory operates in. It's way too light and introductory for most audiences.

26 June 2017

As someone who has a degree in history and political science, I fully recognize that books like this have limited value. They're written quickly, with little care for accuracy and a lot of reliance on background/anonymous claims, and are often ways for people involved in campaigns to shift blame off of themselves and onto someone else.

With that said, man did this book scratch that schadenfruede itch.

I didn't vote for Trump, but I was very against Clinton as well. This sort of deep dive into what went wrong for Clinton in what should have been a winnable election will certainly be of some value to some people, but a lot of this seems to be an attempt to sort of square the chaos coming from the Clinton campaign with the result. I would have loved to see how this would have read had she won.

As for other criticisms, there is a lot of assumptions of prior knowledge - if you don't know a lot of details about the campaign, you will be lost by some references to bills or situations that do not get a firm explanation. That's a problem for me as a reader, and will be a bigger problem for those who might read this in thirty years fine.

On a whole, though, closer to a 3.5, and more enjoyable for what it stands for than what it is. A better book about the campaign that deals with both sides will come someday, and it will certainly be better.

16 May 2017

Emery Lord wrote my favorite YA book, so she’s always going to get something resembling a pass for me even if what she does isn’t perfect. When We Collided was a gorgeous emotional roller-coaster, but I can’t help but feel like The Names They Gave Us is a step backward in terms of what Lord has shown she’s capable of and the emotional gravity of her more recent work.

The story follows Lucy, a girl raised by a pastor in a very religious family. Her mother has cancer, her boyfriend wants to put their relationship on pause, and so it’s decided that it will be a good idea for Lucy to spend her summer at the secular summer camp nearby as opposed to the religious camp she has traditionally gone to each year. There, she meets a lot of new kids and counselors and has her horizons widened in ways she never predicted.

The good first: Emery Lord knows how to write a compelling main character who is flawed and interesting without making them unrealistic. Lucy is religious and semi-sheltered, but this isn’t presented in a shameful way, or in a way that shows her to be some sort of freak that we shouldn’t buy into, and that’s fairly refreshing. It makes for an interesting way to create some conflicts without being insulting.

The bad, though? Lord has succeeded, up until now, to putting together narratives that don’t appear to be checkbox worthy, and this just feels like a sort of tolerance tale that we’re along for the ride on. Teen pregnancy? Check. Trans issues? Check. Cultural differences? Check. Worse, Lucy (while, again, not being raised to be intolerant at all) does not give much of an impression about any internal struggle or confliction about any of these issues. On one hand, kudos to her (and Lord) for making it no big deal, but what instead happens is a complete lack of opportunity to demonstrate some empathy for the other side in an era where none exists. And that might be fine on its own, but with the current social situation in YA publishing, it’s difficult not to wonder whether it impacted things.

Overall, a good read, but it had a lot of potential to be better. As an evangelist for The Start of Me and You for years now, I’ll still be pointing to that for the best of YA. This one felt more Open Road Summer, which is a misstep at this point.

Emery Lord wrote my favorite YA book, so she’s always going to get something resembling a pass for me even if what she does isn’t perfect. When We Collided was a gorgeous emotional roller-coaster, but I can’t help but feel like The Names They Gave Us is a step backward in terms of what Lord has shown she’s capable of and the emotional gravity of her more recent work.

The story follows Lucy, a girl raised by a pastor in a very religious family. Her mother has cancer, her boyfriend wants to put their relationship on pause, and so it’s decided that it will be a good idea for Lucy to spend her summer at the secular summer camp nearby as opposed to the religious camp she has traditionally gone to each year. There, she meets a lot of new kids and counselors and has her horizons widened in ways she never predicted.

The good first: Emery Lord knows how to write a compelling main character who is flawed and interesting without making them unrealistic. Lucy is religious and semi-sheltered, but this isn’t presented in a shameful way, or in a way that shows her to be some sort of freak that we shouldn’t buy into, and that’s fairly refreshing. It makes for an interesting way to create some conflicts without being insulting.

The bad, though? Lord has succeeded, up until now, to putting together narratives that don’t appear to be checkbox worthy, and this just feels like a sort of tolerance tale that we’re along for the ride on. Teen pregnancy? Check. Trans issues? Check. Cultural differences? Check. Worse, Lucy (while, again, not being raised to be intolerant at all) does not give much of an impression about any internal struggle or confliction about any of these issues. On one hand, kudos to her (and Lord) for making it no big deal, but what instead happens is a complete lack of opportunity to demonstrate some empathy for the other side in an era where none exists. And that might be fine on its own, but with the current social situation in YA publishing, it’s difficult not to wonder whether it impacted things.

Overall, a good read, but it had a lot of potential to be better. As an evangelist for The Start of Me and You for years now, I’ll still be pointing to that for the best of YA. This one felt more Open Road Summer, which is a misstep at this point.

12 May 2017

It’s probably apt that the book involving weirdness surrounding film that has gotten the best critical attention is my least favorite.

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get my hands on a copy of this without having to buy a copy (library systems are both amazing and frustrating), and I was hoping, given the amount of positive press this book has gotten, that it would be up there with favorites like Flicker and Night Film for me. Unfortunately, this fell flat.

The book follows a film critic who heads down a rabbit hole after seeing the screening of a lost film at a festival. The exploration of the film results in a lot of strange finds and a deeper mystery being unraveled as a result.

It’s a tried and true plot, and very reminiscent of Flicker in many regards. For whatever reason, however, the plot didn’t grab me this time. I don’t know if it’s the style Gemma Files chose to write in, or just that I had a lot of trouble buying into the premise in this context. It may be that I’ve read two great books in this sort of subgenre and my bar is becoming too high to clear? I don’t know, but this didn’t do it for me.

Overall, I would still recommend Flicker or Night Film before this, but that doesn’t mean other readers wouldn’t enjoy this more – what tickles me about this subgenre will almost certainly have nothing to do with what might lead you down this path.

11 May 2017

If there was a “Jeff VanderMeer Book Club,” I think this would be one of the top ones on the list. Some of his recommendations are spot-on for me, but then there are books like Pond that leave me completely puzzled.

At its core, the book is 20 individual stories that could be taken as a cohesive-yet-fractured whole, and has a common setting to set itself in. As a piece of literature, the structure and format is unique and something I’m not recalling seeing elsewhere, but for me to really be wowed I need to really buy into the story being told, and it just didn’t work. The pieces were too short for me to be engaged for the most part, and the overall tale? Not all that compelling, either, to be fair.

I don’t know if it’s more the format or more the result here that took me out of the story, but it just didn’t work. I know some people enjoy literary for the sake of literary, so if you’re one of those people, this might be a hidden gem for you. Otherwise, though…

I read a good number of subreddits about books, specifically fantasy and sci-fi. Among the books reddit loves? Blindsight by Peter Watts, a book I did not enjoy for a lot of reasons. Another one that was brought up again and again? Senlin Ascends, which involves a very large tower and a man seeking out his lost wife.

I am equally puzzled as to why people love this book, as it has a lot of interesting ideas but is so fatally flawed it almost completely failed to hold my interest throughout. Senlin moves from floor to floor with new characters and challenges, and it’s structured less like a cohesive narrative as much as a bunch of episodes with a tenuous relationship tying them together.

This is a rare case where I don’t have a lot to say beyond “this did not work for me” and it is one I cannot recommend. I also might need to rethink my relying on reddit for these recommendations, as what I’m looking for in books doesn’t seem to relate.

The second Cass Neary tale, this is notable because a) Jeff VanderMeer recommended it on Twitter and I checked it out on that recommendation b) only to realize a quarter of the way through that this wasn’t actually the first book in the series.

So I read the second one first. Oops.

The good news is that reading this second didn’t take away from much. The book does an excellent job of reintroducing Cass, and the Cass in this book feels a lot more real than she does in the first (almost certainly, I would learn later, due to the events in the first). A result here is that the story here is definitely darker and more my speed, and probably better crafted as well.

I still recommend you read the first book first, but the overall necessity isn’t 100%. The only necessary thing is to check out this series, as it’s definitely a solid read for someone who is not really into the genre on a whole.

The first book in the Cass Neary series, this establishes Cass as a character and all the flaws and problems she faces, both due to her own actions and those of others.

In this debut volume, we learn about Cass’s past as a briefly-important photographer who hasn’t really done much since then, but she is drawn into the search for a reclusive artist that ends up overturning some stones that were better left untouched.

As someone who doesn’t generally read mystery books, I’m surprised at how easily I was hooked into this series, as Cass is a perfect example of a flawed and damaged yet compelling character with some real agency. It’s a book where I felt like almost everything mattered, which is a nice change of pace, and I didn’t feel like the traditional mystery tropes that generally turn me off from the genre were immediately present.

Overall, it becomes a good package. While not my favorite of the three currently-written books in the Cassverse (for lack of a better term), this works as an excellent introduction to the series and has been a book that I’ve recommended to a few people who have loved it.

As a fan of The Mountain Goats as well as enjoying Wolf in White Van, John Darnielle is making his case in the fiction realm for good with Universal Harvester. The good news is that the quality of the writing here remains strong, but the bad is that the plot itself is a bit of a retread and I don’t feel as if this stakes much of its own ground enough to turn the book into something special.

Taking place in the 1990s, there are videotapes being returned to the local rental store with mysterious scenes recorded onto them. The mystery deepens as more videos have this issue, and the book explores the phenomenon. Granted, in a sense, found video and mysterious film is a big subgenre ticky box for me, so I came into this read not only with high expectations, but a lot of expectations and beliefs about what makes a book like this work.

Universal Harvester works for the genre it’s in, but not so much in this subgenre. Darnielle is too good a writer to fail completely, but the lack of real oomph or urgency in this story is the real issue keeping this book from being something special. I felt, personally, that the things which drove me to the plot of this book were secondary in ways they weren’t in books like Night Film or Flicker, both of which are masterpieces in combining their genre slot with this sort of film mystery. I could have even taken something like The Ring as a point of reference for this book – goodness knows the setting would absolutely lend itself to it – but we didn’t get that.

Overall? A well-written book that didn’t grab me. If it had followed through better on its hook, it would move from good to great.

This is the sci-fi “it book” of the moment, getting all the award attention and all the hype.

Reading this on my Kindle, I got it pretty early on – the book just immerses you into this universe immediately and expects you to catch up and catch on by yourself, and I have a lot of respect for that. Then the plot, for me, came to a screeching halt and any reasons I had to care for what was going on was gone. This book ultimately tries to straddle the line between a few science fiction genres, and I do wonder if I’d appreciate this more if I hadn’t read so much in the genre up to this point, but it gets bonus points from the sci-fi intelligentsia for a lot of reasons thus the awards excitement.

This wasn’t bad, but I can’t say it was especially good, either, and had more flaws than positives for me on a whole due to some rough plot construction and an inability, for me, to follow through with the early potential. I can list off dozens of science fiction books better worth your time on a whole. Closer to a 2.5.

10 May 2017

I think I’ll start by saying that this is a goofy book. There’s nothing wrong with goofy at all, but the way this book presents itself in contrast with the subject matter provided is just strange. With that said, this was a fun and light romp that ultimately hit a lot of my interest points, resulting in a really enjoyable read.

The story follows a college film student obsessed with Stanley Kubrick. He probably knows more than his professors do on the subject, and is quickly brought in on a “game” created by the director himself. The game involves a bit of a worldwide scavenger hunt, involves some of the great theories of Kubrick’s work, and threatens to uncover some interesting secrets that people in the know might never actually want out.

In terms of a straight fiction tale, as I said – kind of goofy. But when you approach the book as sort of a fun ARG simulation where an author can freely explore a few interests s/he has all at once, it makes a lot more sense. To approach this with that in mind made for a quick and breezy read that, as reveal after reveal occurred, kept me smiling throughout.

This will win no awards, but if you like crazy conspiracies or are a Kubrick nerd, there’s a lot here to enjoy.

Having spent a good amount of time in the last few years in the weird/horror space after decades of avoiding it, the one thing I’ve been surprised by up to this point is how it’s one thing for me to be uneasy or grossed out or whatever by something I read, but not often do I become unsettled or scared. So hello to Bird Box.

The conceit is creepy in and of itself, where people just randomly start going mad and killing themselves and perhaps taking others with them. It’s quickly assumed/figured out that there’s a sort of creature or monster that, when viewed by a person, triggers said madness. Society quickly shuts down, squirreling itself away in homes and only going outside blindfolded or with covered eyes. The story follows one woman who ends up with a group of survivors and how they’re dealing with the situation.

The story is super unsettling because the author just does a great job of putting the fear and uncertainty front and center. Everything is so uneasy and the way the mysteries are sometimes-but-not-fully revealed as time progresses is really brilliant. Rarely did I feel like I had an idea as to what was coming next, and some of the reveals were outright heartbreaking both in terms of how it advanced the story and the result. It’s rare for me to get that sort of response from a book, especially a horror one, so you know this is something special.

I have nothing negative to say at all about this. If you like weird, creepy, unsettling stories? Find a copy of this immediately. I’ve never read anything like it, and it’s one of the better things I’ve read as of late.

07 May 2017

It should be noted, before we go any further, that I'm a sucker for time travel novels.

With that out of the way, here is one of the latest in the genre, All Our Wrong Todays, which has a premise where the timelines are screwed up once someone goes back to a time and messes with the event that introduces massive technological change in the world. Quickly, it becomes a story about alternating timelines and advanced technology and what have you.

On the merits, I give it a 5. On the overall, though, there's a lot wrong with the way this races to the finish line and gets a little too confusing. Also, the structure of the book itself is unique but often frustrating in that chapters are 2-3 pages each and create a sort of disjointed narrative that, while likely intentional, took me out more than I wanted it to.

Overall, though, high marks for this one. A lot of fun in spite of the few flaws, and ultimately a good time.

I've been reading Wonder Woman for at least a decade now, and the common theme seems to be "what have they done with her?" I didn't hate what I read from the New 52 run, but I also know that non-Rucka efforts have been lacking.

So how's Rebirth? Well, it's an interesting way to pull everything together from the previous retcons and reboots, but my biggest complaint so far is how little actually happens here. Diana lacks any real forward motion, the motivations are slow to come about, and the whole thing just feels like some of the more middling older efforts.

I trust Rucka enough to not screw it up, so to speak, but my optimism, combined with the current comics culture and the overall reduction in quality of the major comics publishers leaves me a little worried.

I had some electrical work done on my house today, and I've had Borne sitting on my desk/end table/work bag since it came out, so a morning without electric power seemed like a perfect time to settle in with a book about sentient bioengineered amoebas and flying bears. Jeff VanderMeer is perfect for things like this, where the surreal seems so commonplace and the unsettling so typical, and Borne is maybe the best effort surrounding it that I've read from VanderMeer so far - and that's speaking as someone who thinks Area X is one of those pinnacle reads.

The story concerns Rachel and a... thing she finds and names Borne. Borne sort of resembles a sea anemone, or something, but it eats and feeds and grows and eventually talks and learns and what have you. In Rachel's world, a post-climate change post-corporate wasteland, Borne might have been bioengineered or worse, but Borne and Rachel form a bond of sorts. Rachel's friend, however, is a little more skeptical, and there's just a lot of mystery surrounding the whole situation of their area. Oh, and flying bioengineered bears. That wasn't a joke.

It's hard to describe books by Jeff VanderMeer and make them sound serious or, if you're not one to stretch your literary wings, even all that compelling. But Borne, while having a steady and deliberate ecological strain flowing underneath it, is really a story about relationships and trusts. The relationship between Rachel and Borne mirrors a lot of what one might expect in readily-identifiable ones, and the situations of trust and of coping with the reality that's in front of you is stronger here than what I've read in more traditional reads. It's just really brilliant.

I didn't expect to read this all in one, powerless sitting, but I did. The prose is so compelling, the story so solid even in spite of a lot of absurdity on the surface, that it was very hard to put down once I was fully immersed. I knew I'd like this a lot, but love was something I didn't see coming. Give this one a shot, especially if you still haven't jumped on the VanderMeer bandwagon.

02 May 2017

Skitter is the book the original story, The Hatching, deserved to be. While the first book was like a silly b-movie, for whatever reason Skitter raises the stakes by giving us an opportunity to see how people are coping (or not) with the spiderpocaylpse.

So many things I loved about this. The surprise deaths, the political machinations of the President, the international intrigue, the way the book kept me guessing. And the end of the book is a surprise in and of itself, and something I never expect to see in fiction and is executed perfectly here.

Honestly, as someone who didn't loveThe Hatching, this was a breath of fresh air. These books are light enough fare where you can tear through the first to get to the second easily, and if you have any joy for silly MST3K-style bad movies or crazy monster tales, this is a book that should get fully onto your radar.

the latest (final?) book in what’s been a really interesting series by Robert Jackson Bennett, this book still doesn’t reach the heights of City of Stairs, but is miles ahead of City of Swords. What this does well is bring a lot of the great parts of both books into place for this third act. Lots of callbacks to everything that’s gone on, a classic trope to tie everything together, and a fairly worthwhile conclusion.

I liked it a lot, but I didn’t love it. I wanted to love it because I love so much of Bennett’s other work, but the bar was simply set too high with Stairs and it never quite gets to that point. Still, the characters here are more compelling than in Swords (and that includes being written in a more compelling way when we have returning people), and the story itself has a more investigative tone that was unexpected, so it’s far, far, far from a failure. Overall, though, this will seemingly always remain a series that missed a lot of its potential.

11 April 2017

I think I was 60-70% in when I saw like “wow, this is really pulpy” only to learn after the fact that this is, in fact, a homage/reboot to a pulp classic from generations ago. A modernization of the Captain Future tales of old, this evokes all those same ideas and themes without feeling too old, but I feel as if you really need to have a bit of a context for what this is a tribute to in order to fully appreciate it for what it is.

Beyond that major roadblock, this is a really fun romp. The stakes aren’t too high, and it still works in spite of it being so different from the current crop of science fiction writing out there. Allan Steele has always excelled at being different, and this is true for Avengers of the Moon, too. Worth a look.

04 April 2017

I know there continues to be a bit of a Lovecraftian renaissance happening in terms of some of the fantasy books coming out. Winter Tide takes a historical fiction bent to the proceedings and gives a good, but far from great, attempt at expanding out the Mythos.

The story takes place a while after the eradication of the people and place of Innsmouth. The government effectively destroyed Innsmouth following an attack, and only two people have survived. Now there's concerns that information from Miskatonic University is falling into the wrong hands, and it's now up to the few survivors of the Innsmouth situation to solve the problem.

There's a clear post-internment attitude to this, which is a nice twist for the Mythos itself as well as a cool take on the story. There's a lot of time spent on the research and in the libraries, and that might be the book's downfall - it takes a lot of time in this area, and for questionable benefit. I spent a good deal of time hoping they'd get on with it to the point where the ending of the story was both fulfilling while also being frustrating in its climax.

I have not read "The Litany of Earth," a short story that has some of the same characters, so I may have missed some key points along the way, but overall, I liked but didn't love this story. There have not been any lack of Lovecraft-style tales of late, so I wouldn't bump this to the top of the list, but I would say that it's worth a look for a different style of story. I feel like I might want to read a story like this that focuses more on research aspects, but perhaps without some of the baggage that comes with this sort of tale.

I was supremely impressed by Sleeping Giants, which was a great documentary-style science fiction book about finding the pieces to a giant robot littered across the planet. If Giants was about discovery, Waking Gods is about consequences, and that's what ultimately makes the sequel work. We get to delve even more into the worldwide response to the robots but, more importantly, we get a much more detailed idea as to what the robots might mean.

It's hard to discuss this book without completely spoiling what goes on, but there are more than enough shocking moments throughout that make this into another winning tale and ends in a way that makes me really look forward to what's coming next. As long as the style of the story doesn't take you out of it, this is a series worth watching.

10 March 2017

The best way I can describe this is Lost in Translation for the teen set. A book that celebrates the opportunity to live and study abroad, along with everything else that goes along with it, it’s both quiet and fun, exciting yet subdued.

Why, then, am I not enthused by this book?

I couldn’t tell you 100% of the reasoning why. A lot of it is that this book doesn’t feel like it has a ton in the way of stakes going for it. There was little reason for me to root for a particular outcome, and everything felt rather mapped out from the start for me. The adventures (and I use the term here in context) felt fairly subdued on a whole, and, honestly, there wasn’t a ton here for me to invest the emotional energy.

Truly, there’s perhaps an argument to be made that this is more about setting and such for the audience rather than the deep story. But I compare it to Lost in Translation in that the story is one that I remember very little about while continuing to have very strong and vivid visuals. The result is a book that, in a way, felt like a vacation I’d like to go on, just not necessarily with the people involved. A good read, but far from mind-blowing.

A collection of shortish chapters in a novella that’s supposed to evoke a Lovecraftian feel, but it really just didn’t do the trick for me. I didn’t go in with much of any expectations, and I just found a lot of this to be a little lacking on a whole, and then it was over. Reading an advance of it, by the time I neared the end I was actively afraid that I had picked up a sample of the book instead of a full novel.

Overall, I just felt really disappointed by the whole thing. I’m usually into everything Lovecraft, but this missed the mark.

06 February 2017

I never like throwing in the towel on advance books, but Shadowbahn, in spite of its interesting premise where the Twin Towers reappear in the Badlands, just didn't work. Part of it is my fault - I thought the author was the same guy who does the Malazan books, but this simply means that the experimental tale told here is even less relevant to my interests on a whole. It's a weird book - not a difficult one - but one that just wasn't what I wanted or looked for.